St. Ignatius Mission

The Jesuits moved their mission to this valley in 1854, at the invitation of the Upper Pend d'Oreille, and within a decade it had mills, shops and a chapel. In 1864 four Sisters of Providence, the first Catholic sisters in Montana, came to open a boarding school for girls; the Jesuits added one for boys in 1878, and the Ursulines arrived in 1890. At its height in the early 1890s about three hundred Native children, from the Flathead Reservation and from nations across the region, lived and studied here, taught religion and trades away from their families. The Ursulines ran a boarding school at the mission until the early 1970s.

The church that stands now went up between 1891 and 1893, of brick fired from local clay and timber milled on the place. Inside, Brother Joseph Carignano, an Italian Jesuit with no training as a painter who worked as the mission's cook and handyman, covered the walls and ceiling with 58 murals and medallions in 1904 and 1905, fitting the work between his other duties. They show scenes from both testaments and the lives of the saints, with a triptych of St. Ignatius's visions behind the altar.

The 1854 log cabin of the first missionaries stands beside the church as a small museum, with the sisters' 1864 residence. The church is a working parish; visitors walk through on their own when no service is on, and the Mission Mountains fill the view to the east.